1. Statement of the Technical Field
The present invention relates to collaborative computing and more particularly to persistent human-to-human conversational tools.
2. Description of the Related Art
Real time communications systems provide a substantial enhancement over more traditional, asynchronous communications systems. Electronic mail delivery systems, the prototypical asynchronous communications systems, in its time represented a giant leap forward in respect to global interpersonal communications. Prior to electronic mail, individuals primarily communicated via telephone, facsimile and post. With electronic mail, however, individuals expect near instant delivery of text, and even imagery, audio and video, without incurring the delay typical of the postal system, or the expense associated with telephony and fax technologies.
Despite the ubiquity of electronic mail, asynchronous communications system lack several elements common in the realm of real time communications systems. In particular, the seemingly instant delivery of a message cannot be experienced in the world of electronic mail. In an real-time society, the minor latencies associated with electronic mail often cannot be suitable for the task at hand where a real-time conversation will be required in addressing a problem or performing a collaborative task. More importantly, often the feel and nature of a “conversation” as it is known to human beings only can be approximated through real time communications where the participants to a conversation feel the spontaneity of an exchange of ideas, much as is the case in a live, face-to-face conversation.
The recent rapid development of the Internet has led to advanced modes of synchronous, real-time collaboration able to fulfill the real-time communicative requirements of the modern computing participant. Using the Internet as a backbone, individuals worldwide can converge in real-time in cyberspace to share ideas, documents and images in a manner not previously possible through conventional telephony and video conferencing. To facilitate collaboration over the Internet, a substantial collection of technologies and protocols have been assembled to effectively deliver audio, video and data over the single data communications medium of the Internet. These technologies include several human-to-human collaborative environments such as instant messaging, application sharing, shared document libraries persistent chat rooms, and new communicative environments that support persistent chat and other persistent documents and objects.
In a persistent chat environment, a collaborative space can be established in which the postings of chat participants can be maintained in a bulletin board fashion, regardless of whether participants are actively engaged in the chat session at any one time. In a prototypical “chat” or “persistent chat”, which can be understood as terms of art to refer to both the act of chatting and the conversational space and/or transcript in which that act of chatting has occurred, participants post conversational contributions referred to as “turns” in the chat visible to all participants. Importantly, the persistent nature of the persistent chat can result from the persistence of the turns in the chat transcript regardless of whether any participants remain actively participants in the chat. Thus, the persistent chat can function as an important collaborative tool for a long-standing collaboration.
As a human-to-human conversational space, the persistent chat can form the basis of a long standing collaboration. Yet, it will be recognized by the skilled artisan that not all collaboration can be documented within the persistent chat. In this regard, much collaborative content can be produced and maintained externally to the persistent chat. As a result, to the extent that the persistent chat is to act as a record of a long-standing collaborative effort, however, a significant portion of the collaborative effort will be absent from the record produced and maintained in the persistent chat.